Copyright Violation Theater Proudly Presents: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers
A bit of set-up here: Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Kryten are stuck in Better Than Life, an addictive and deadly total immersion video game, which fulfills all your wildest fantasies. During the time which this excerpt is taken from, Rimmer does not realize yet that he's in the game.
********
The black stretch Mercedes with the tinted, bullet-proof glass glided along the Champs Elysees, and pulled up outside the canopy of the hundred-and-forty-floor skyscraper. Rimmer finished his phone call to his publicist, then stepped out of the limo. A string of bodyguards kept at bay the group of teenage girls who'd camped out on the steps overnight, in the hope of catching a glimpse of A.J.R. He allowed them a thin smile as he walked under the canopy and up the marble steps into the Rimmer Building (Paris). The Rimmer Building (Paris) was an identical copy of the Rimmer Building (London) and the Rimmer Building (New York). He was happy with the towering glass and steel architecture, so he saw no need to vary the design. The electric doors purred open and he strode across the thick white mink carpet, trailed by the gaggle of accountants and financial advisers who seemed to follow him everywhere.
As he walked across the massive lobby, he dismissed his financial advisers for the evening, and nodded almost imperceptibly at Pierre, the Sorbonne graduate he'd hired exclusively to press the button that summoned the lift. While he waited, he swung round to look at the colossal white marble statue of himself, captured in the middle of a Full Double Rimmer, which the Space Corps had long accepted as its standard official salute. The lift took a full ninety seconds to arrive, so he fired Pierre and pressed the button himself for floor 140 - his luxury penthouse suite. The fact that he could actually press the button at all was, in a way, the key to the immense fortune he'd amassed since his return to Earth two years previously.
After the hero's welcome, his cunning business brain had taken full advantage of the offers which flooded in daily. With the money he culled from advertising and the publication of his memoirs, he'd set up various multi-national corporations which had sponsored the Rimmer Research Centres, which had finally invented the Solidgram - a solid body that housed his personality and intellect. He was now exactly like any normal living person, with the added bonus that he was more or less immortal. The Solidgram had sold in such quantities, his income from that alone allowed him to buy the Bahamas for 'somewhere to go for the weekends.'
It amused him to no end that he was now one of the three or four richest men in the world, while Lister was stuck in a dead-end burger bar in a dead-end town somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
He'd hired a private investigator who had taken fourteen months to track him down, Rimmer was now well into the complicated negotiations to buy up the entire town, which he intended to turn into a huge maggot farm. Just for the hell of it.
He got out of the lift and walked past the salute-shaped pool on the roof garden. Hugo, one of the gardening staff, was aquavac-ing cherry blossoms off the surface of the water.
"Monsieur Rimmer!" he called. "Madame Juanita - she is unwell again."
Rimmer sighed. "Unwell" was the code for throwing a major Brazilian wobbly. His wife was having one of her regular tantrums. Juanita Chicata was unquestionably the most beautiful woman in the world. Everything about her was classic, from the tip of her perfect nose to the toes of her beautiful feet. Eyes the colour of fire, panther-black hair, dangerous lips. Dangerous woman. She'd made two fortunes, the first as the world's number one model, the second as the world's number one actress. And she was a great actress - she wasn't a model who got by on her looks, she really was the finest actress in the world. And she was nineteen years old. She had beauty, brains, talent, everything. God had finally got it right.
Every man, every man desired her.
And she'd married Rimmer two summers earlier. This was another source of amusement for Rimmer. While Lister had ended up with a very ordinary girl-next-door type, he'd acquired the "Brazilian Bombshell."
Right now the Brazilian Bombshell was exploding in the master bedroom of their penthouse apartment. Rimmer wandered through the exotic Chinese roof garden, while four hundred catering staff prepared for the customary Saturday night party. The marquee had been erected overlooking the glistening Seine, the forty-thousand fireworks were all in place and primed, the three-hundred-yard long buffet table was crammed to overflowing with food which had been flown in from around the world earlier that day, the centerpiece of which was a replica of Juanita's naked body in caviar. He paused to admire it. Even like this, even sculpted from little black fish eggs, it was a body that drove him crazy. He couldn't help himself - he leaned over and nibbled at the splendid right breast - the real ones were insured for ten million each, and she hadn't let him near them for over a year and a half. Which was why right now Rimmer had his face buried deep in the ice-cold caviar.
Suddenly, from above, there was a shattering of glass as a Louis XIV grand piano crashed out from the french windows of their master bedroom and landed on the roof garden, crushing one of the catering staff.
It had amused Rimmer when the private detective reported that Lister had a piano - a clapped-out tuneless wreck with dry rot which Lister had bought at a second-hand shop in Bedford Falls for four dollars and thirty cents. Rimmer's piano, which now lay in pieces on top of a screaming servant, had cost him a million. It was a lot to pay for a piano that nobody played, but his wife thought it would look "kinda neat" in the bedroom, so he'd got it. Now, of course, it wasn't worth the price of a cup of tea, because she'd hurled it out of the window because she was..."unwell."
Juanita was regularly "unwell" - perhaps two or three times a week - and on each occasion it cost Rimmer upwards of three hundred thousand. Still, he could afford it. And she was the most beautiful woman alive. And she was married to him.
As he walked into the master bedroom he found Juanita hurling dollops of cold cream at an original Picasso, while two maids swept up the remains of the fifth-century Ming vase she'd used to smash the nose of the Michelangelo statue he'd bought her as a kiss-and-make-up gift.
Rimmer sighed and shook his head. Why had she gone crazy this time? What was the reason for today's little sulk? Was it because for the second month in a row she wasn't on the cover of Vogue? Was it because she was on the cover of Vogue, and she didn't like the photograph? Was it because she'd put on a pound in weight? Or had she lost a pound in weight? Both, of course, were disastrous. Had the maid accidentally brought up Lapsang tea instead of Keema? Last time she did that it cost Rimmer three Matisses and his entire collection of Iranian pottery. Was the telephone dirty again? Was there nothing on TV she wanted to watch?
Whatever it was she was obviously upset, because now she had taken down Rimmer's twelfth century samurai sword and was hacking away at the water bed. The liquid gurgled happily over the irreplaceable Persian rug.
"'Nita, 'Nita," he cooed soothingly as he sploshed over towards her, "what is it? What has disturbed my little turtle dove?"
She turned to face him, ferocious, the samurai sword clasped above her head. "I can't tell you. You wouldn't understand eet!" She skewered a Cezanne hanging above the bed, and sliced it into thin shreds.
"You can tell me anything," Rimmer said softly.
"Not thees! I can't tell you thees!"
"Please. Tell me what's made you so angry."
"Hugo!" she screeched and, at the mention of his name, she hurled the Koh-i-Nor out of the window and down into the Champs Elysees below.
"What about Hugo?" said Rimmer, picking up the phone to make arrangements for the pool man's dismissal.
"He won't make love to me anymore," she bawled. Then she collapsed into a sobbing heap in the soggy mess of the demolished water bed. "Not ever. He's afraid you'll find out and sack heem."
"Well, he's got a point," Rimmer found himself saying.
Then it hit him.
What she'd said. He was stunned. He felt sick.
He was nauseated. His wife unfaithful! Juanita and Hugo! His hairy-shouldered pool attendant had caressed that fabulous bosom! What would the insurance company say?
His wife had slept with his pool attendant. No wonder the water was never at the right temperature!
Rimmer felt...numb.
********
The black stretch Mercedes with the tinted, bullet-proof glass glided along the Champs Elysees, and pulled up outside the canopy of the hundred-and-forty-floor skyscraper. Rimmer finished his phone call to his publicist, then stepped out of the limo. A string of bodyguards kept at bay the group of teenage girls who'd camped out on the steps overnight, in the hope of catching a glimpse of A.J.R. He allowed them a thin smile as he walked under the canopy and up the marble steps into the Rimmer Building (Paris). The Rimmer Building (Paris) was an identical copy of the Rimmer Building (London) and the Rimmer Building (New York). He was happy with the towering glass and steel architecture, so he saw no need to vary the design. The electric doors purred open and he strode across the thick white mink carpet, trailed by the gaggle of accountants and financial advisers who seemed to follow him everywhere.
As he walked across the massive lobby, he dismissed his financial advisers for the evening, and nodded almost imperceptibly at Pierre, the Sorbonne graduate he'd hired exclusively to press the button that summoned the lift. While he waited, he swung round to look at the colossal white marble statue of himself, captured in the middle of a Full Double Rimmer, which the Space Corps had long accepted as its standard official salute. The lift took a full ninety seconds to arrive, so he fired Pierre and pressed the button himself for floor 140 - his luxury penthouse suite. The fact that he could actually press the button at all was, in a way, the key to the immense fortune he'd amassed since his return to Earth two years previously.
After the hero's welcome, his cunning business brain had taken full advantage of the offers which flooded in daily. With the money he culled from advertising and the publication of his memoirs, he'd set up various multi-national corporations which had sponsored the Rimmer Research Centres, which had finally invented the Solidgram - a solid body that housed his personality and intellect. He was now exactly like any normal living person, with the added bonus that he was more or less immortal. The Solidgram had sold in such quantities, his income from that alone allowed him to buy the Bahamas for 'somewhere to go for the weekends.'
It amused him to no end that he was now one of the three or four richest men in the world, while Lister was stuck in a dead-end burger bar in a dead-end town somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
He'd hired a private investigator who had taken fourteen months to track him down, Rimmer was now well into the complicated negotiations to buy up the entire town, which he intended to turn into a huge maggot farm. Just for the hell of it.
He got out of the lift and walked past the salute-shaped pool on the roof garden. Hugo, one of the gardening staff, was aquavac-ing cherry blossoms off the surface of the water.
"Monsieur Rimmer!" he called. "Madame Juanita - she is unwell again."
Rimmer sighed. "Unwell" was the code for throwing a major Brazilian wobbly. His wife was having one of her regular tantrums. Juanita Chicata was unquestionably the most beautiful woman in the world. Everything about her was classic, from the tip of her perfect nose to the toes of her beautiful feet. Eyes the colour of fire, panther-black hair, dangerous lips. Dangerous woman. She'd made two fortunes, the first as the world's number one model, the second as the world's number one actress. And she was a great actress - she wasn't a model who got by on her looks, she really was the finest actress in the world. And she was nineteen years old. She had beauty, brains, talent, everything. God had finally got it right.
Every man, every man desired her.
And she'd married Rimmer two summers earlier. This was another source of amusement for Rimmer. While Lister had ended up with a very ordinary girl-next-door type, he'd acquired the "Brazilian Bombshell."
Right now the Brazilian Bombshell was exploding in the master bedroom of their penthouse apartment. Rimmer wandered through the exotic Chinese roof garden, while four hundred catering staff prepared for the customary Saturday night party. The marquee had been erected overlooking the glistening Seine, the forty-thousand fireworks were all in place and primed, the three-hundred-yard long buffet table was crammed to overflowing with food which had been flown in from around the world earlier that day, the centerpiece of which was a replica of Juanita's naked body in caviar. He paused to admire it. Even like this, even sculpted from little black fish eggs, it was a body that drove him crazy. He couldn't help himself - he leaned over and nibbled at the splendid right breast - the real ones were insured for ten million each, and she hadn't let him near them for over a year and a half. Which was why right now Rimmer had his face buried deep in the ice-cold caviar.
Suddenly, from above, there was a shattering of glass as a Louis XIV grand piano crashed out from the french windows of their master bedroom and landed on the roof garden, crushing one of the catering staff.
It had amused Rimmer when the private detective reported that Lister had a piano - a clapped-out tuneless wreck with dry rot which Lister had bought at a second-hand shop in Bedford Falls for four dollars and thirty cents. Rimmer's piano, which now lay in pieces on top of a screaming servant, had cost him a million. It was a lot to pay for a piano that nobody played, but his wife thought it would look "kinda neat" in the bedroom, so he'd got it. Now, of course, it wasn't worth the price of a cup of tea, because she'd hurled it out of the window because she was..."unwell."
Juanita was regularly "unwell" - perhaps two or three times a week - and on each occasion it cost Rimmer upwards of three hundred thousand. Still, he could afford it. And she was the most beautiful woman alive. And she was married to him.
As he walked into the master bedroom he found Juanita hurling dollops of cold cream at an original Picasso, while two maids swept up the remains of the fifth-century Ming vase she'd used to smash the nose of the Michelangelo statue he'd bought her as a kiss-and-make-up gift.
Rimmer sighed and shook his head. Why had she gone crazy this time? What was the reason for today's little sulk? Was it because for the second month in a row she wasn't on the cover of Vogue? Was it because she was on the cover of Vogue, and she didn't like the photograph? Was it because she'd put on a pound in weight? Or had she lost a pound in weight? Both, of course, were disastrous. Had the maid accidentally brought up Lapsang tea instead of Keema? Last time she did that it cost Rimmer three Matisses and his entire collection of Iranian pottery. Was the telephone dirty again? Was there nothing on TV she wanted to watch?
Whatever it was she was obviously upset, because now she had taken down Rimmer's twelfth century samurai sword and was hacking away at the water bed. The liquid gurgled happily over the irreplaceable Persian rug.
"'Nita, 'Nita," he cooed soothingly as he sploshed over towards her, "what is it? What has disturbed my little turtle dove?"
She turned to face him, ferocious, the samurai sword clasped above her head. "I can't tell you. You wouldn't understand eet!" She skewered a Cezanne hanging above the bed, and sliced it into thin shreds.
"You can tell me anything," Rimmer said softly.
"Not thees! I can't tell you thees!"
"Please. Tell me what's made you so angry."
"Hugo!" she screeched and, at the mention of his name, she hurled the Koh-i-Nor out of the window and down into the Champs Elysees below.
"What about Hugo?" said Rimmer, picking up the phone to make arrangements for the pool man's dismissal.
"He won't make love to me anymore," she bawled. Then she collapsed into a sobbing heap in the soggy mess of the demolished water bed. "Not ever. He's afraid you'll find out and sack heem."
"Well, he's got a point," Rimmer found himself saying.
Then it hit him.
What she'd said. He was stunned. He felt sick.
He was nauseated. His wife unfaithful! Juanita and Hugo! His hairy-shouldered pool attendant had caressed that fabulous bosom! What would the insurance company say?
His wife had slept with his pool attendant. No wonder the water was never at the right temperature!
Rimmer felt...numb.